What is Sufjan Stevens Up To?

Sufjan Stevens released of his brilliant second album about the state of Illinois, "The Avalanche," in 2006. This was the same year that he gave us his massive (five cd's and sixty-odd-songs-strong) Christmas album. It was a good year for Sufjan fans... it was also the last year he released anything of substance.

So what has he been up to for three years. It turns out that among other things, he has been making a movie. Watch the trailer with this:

http://vimeo.com/5682252

or I posted it to my profile.

The music/movie thing was originally performed in NYC in 2007. The BQE will be available this week in a double-disc format (CD/DVD), which includes the original 16mm/8mm film (in widescreen "triptych" display), the original motion picture soundtrack, a 40-page booklet (with extensive liner notes and photographs), and the stereoscopic image reel (playable in all View-Master® viewers). Yes the 3-D viewfinder thingies that we remember from 1982.



But what is it?

"The BDQ" is apparently about the Brookly-Queens Highway, which Stevens seems to explore as a metaphor for commercialism? utilitarianism? ugliness? I dunno.

Stevens' label explains:

"The BQE is a self-made home-movie documentation, exhibiting how all the architectural colors of Brooklyn and Queens are fabulously intersected by this ramshackle artery of highway traffic. Shot renegade style on do-it-yourself film cameras, the animated footage of grid-lock crisscrossing the brick and mortar of Brooklyn flickers and cascades Koyaanisqatsi-style on three simultaneous screens. The 16mm cinematography (heroically shot by Reuben Kleiner on a 1960s Bolex) utilizes time-lapse photography, in-camera editing, slow motion, and post-production mirror effects to transform urban blight into a splendor of graphic compositions.

"The BQE further extends its mythology by anthropomorphizing the expressway and its theoretical conceits into a 40-page comic book (cover by Matt Loux, masthead by Christian Acker), in which three extra-terrestrial superhero sisters (Botanica, Quantus, and Electress) use hula-hoops to combat the 'the Messiah of Civic Projects,' Captain Moses, and his totalitarian social architecture."


It is a suitably ambitious project for the guy who aspires to record an album about each of the fifty states. (Side question: does this count as a cd about New York?)

It could be good.

He is also releasing another project this year. In 2001 he recorded an electronica album about the Chinese Zodiac ("Enjoy Your Rabbit"). He has reworked the music from that record to be performed by orchestra. That makes sense. It will be called "Run Rabbit Run."



If you have not already done so, get Sufjan's great cds:

Michigan
Seven Swans
Illinois
The Avalanche